LETTER. 



•S442 

Copy I 



Boston, November 3, 1861. 



My Dear 

* * * 



You urge me, on account of ray distressed wife and children, 
to return to Virginia, if I can possibly, and with characteristic 
generosity you offer to divide with them and me your humble 
home. God knows that next to peace for our afflicted country, 
the fondest wish of my heart is to be once more with the loved 
ones who, as you so truly say, once made my home so happy. 
But we can never meet on the soil of our native land, at least 
during the continuance of this unhappy war, nor shall we ever, 
save on some blessed spot where waves that proud emblem of 
protecting power, the Stars and Stripes. 

All considerations of mere personal safety aside, the conditions 
on which I am advised I may return to Virginia and be safe, are 
totally inadmissible. 

Those conditions are, first, that I go by flag of truce to Nor- 
folk, and there obtain from Gen. Huger a guard of protection ; 
secondly, that under that guard I proceed to Richmond, and 
there take the oath of allegiance to Virginia before Gov. Letcher; 
and thirdly, that I also take there the oath of allegiame to the 
Confederate States of America. 

I regret that I find it impossible to comply with these hard 
terms. I can accept no guard from Gen. linger, nor from any 
one else who dares, in the land of Washington and Henry, uplift 
the flag of the Confederate States. When I tread the soil of Vir- 
ginia I must tread it free as the air I quaft', with no guard to make 
me feel the humiliation of a craven slave, with "none to make 
me afraid." 

Still less can I submit to the humiliation of taking the oath 
of allegiance to the land of my birth. There is no need that I 
should : I have never been disloyal to my State, no, never. I have 



I 

But obeyed her highest law. She made the Constitution ol the 
United States a part of her own State Constitution, and she 
prescribed that great master-piece of human wisdom to me as a 
rule of my political conduct, and she prescribed it to me as a 
supreme rule. She gave it to me with two very marked provis- 
ions in it: first, that the laws made in pursuance of it should be 
the supreme law of the land, " any thing in her own State con- 
stitution or laws to the contrary notwithstanding;" secondly, 
that it should not be in any respect changed except by the con- 
sent of three-fourths of all the States in general convention assem- 
bled. 

The first of these two provisions is too plain to be miscon- 
strued. It tells me, in terms so plain that school children may 
understand, that, in a conflict between the Constitution and laws 
of the United States on the one hand, and those of my State on 
the other, I must give up the latter and stand by the former. This 
is just what I am doing. I am obeying my State's commands: I 
am standing by that higher law which she herself laid down for 
my guide, and disobedience to which is double disloyalty — dis- 
loyalty to her, and disloyalty to the government of the Union, 
which she bade me regard as supreme. Wherein, then, have I 
been disloyal to my State ? She had the undoubted right to issue 
to me her commands : am I disloyal to her when I execute those 
commands to the letter? 

The second provision quoted is not less explicit. That Con- 
stitution which my State prescribed to me as a supreme rale, is 
not to be altered, as she herself agreed, except by the assent of 
three-fourths of all her sister States. Is not this provision as 
much prescribed to me, and as binding on me, as any other? 
Did not my State, when she gave me this new rule, order me to 
guide myself by it; to cling to it ; to stand by it and up to it, 
until it should be altered by three-fourths of all the States? 

This inquiry, then, only remains: Has the Constitution been 
changed by a three-fourths majority ? It has not. What then? 
Why this, surely: that nodmvingbeen altered in the only mode in 
which it can be legally altered, it is binding, in its original form, 
with agreed amendments, upon my State, and upon each and 



every State, and upon each and every citizen of every State thstt^ 
was living under the Union at the time of its formation, and thatil 
has lived under its blessed jurisdiction since. And it will continue 
to be so binding until the form of the instrument shall have been 
changed in the only constitutional mode prescribed. 

These two manifest provisions, then, of the Federal Constitu- 
tion, stamp supremacy upon the Government and laws of the 
Union as visibly as the foot-print is impressed on the fresh-fallen 
snow. 

If these positions be well taken, it follows, as the shadow the 
substance, that if 1 obey an order of my State to give up and no 
longer acknowledge the authority of the Federal Government, I 
allow myself to be made a rebel of, and if I take up arms against 
it, or give its enemies aid and comfort, a traitor. My State, I de- 
voutly believe, has no such power. With all her broad province of 
authority, she wants the power to make of me a re.bel or a traitor, 
against my consent. At all eyents, as I, individually, am to be 
hold responsible, and by an all-powerful government, and as, in a 
case of personal treason, my neck and not my State's, is to feel 
the halter's throttle, I have thought it prudent to keep on safety's 
side. 

But I am told that my State, as a sovereign State, has the legal 
right to secede, in other words, to break up the Union at her 
pleasure, and that all true and patriotic Virginians are bound to 
follow her, and will follow her, no matter where. 

This doctrine, so flattering to State pride, I confess I have not 
been altogether averse to falling into — a thing not very unnatural 
in a political community in which the Resolutions of '98, with 
extreme interpretation, alone light the pathway of political aspi- 
rants ; but it never had from me that assent which is founded in 
deliberate investigation and honest conviction. Not until this 
startling issue of the life or death of the government came upon 
us, did I discharge the solemn duty to my country of considering, 
in all its aspects and consequences, this doctrine of separate State 
secession. ( I have now examined it fully, and with the sole view 
of learning where duty pointed me; and I have reached a con- 
viction unobscured by the shadow of a single douljt, that no 



6 

obligation to my State binds me to follow in the path which has 
, Med her to disunion. She has uo constitutional power to release 
herself or me from the bonds of that paramount allegiance to 
the Federal Government, with which she bound herself and me, 
and all her citizens, ^ 

If it be indeed true that the Constitution and laws of the Union 
are superior to and overrule the constitution and laws of the sepa- 
rate States — and if it be further true that it cannot be altered 
except in a particular mode — which particular mode has not been 
resorted to — then secession is, irresistibly, an absurdity. Two su- 
preme powers in a government are simply impossible, and a power 
cannot be exercised by a single State which is delegated, without 
reservation, to three-fourths of a certain number of States — and 
so this doctrine of secession is whirled down the vortex of a s'ulf 
so deep that no gurgle is heard for its requiem. 

From no such source as the much-boasted one of State sove- 
reignty, can it ever rise into life. Since the Union was formed, 
there has been, in our system, no stich thing as State sovereignty. 
It is a myth — a fancy as ideal as Aladdin's lamp, or the philoso- 
pher's stone. Virginia, as a State, cannot declare war, nor raise 
an army, nor maintain a navy, nor coin a copper cent or a silver 
dime, nor establish a post oi3ice, nor lay an import or export duty, 
nor make bank notes a legal tender, nor suspend the habeas cor- 
pus, nor abolish the trial by jury, nor ordain an established re- 
ligion, nor make a treaty, nor enter into an alliance or confede- 
ration, nor pass an ex post facto law, or law impairing the obliga- 
tion of contracts. All these things have been done, and may again 
of right be done, by sovereign States; but no State of the Union has 
ever exercised a single one of these sovereign prerogatives ; and, 
therefore, no State, after it became a member of the Union, can be 
said to be sovereign. To say, then, that the right of secession 
results from the sovereignty of the States — a thing which no sep- 
arate State possesses — ^Js an absurdity no less patent than thaf 
which supposes the Federal Government and that of the separate 
States to be each supreme within the same sphere. The doctrine 
is as void of reason as a barrel without heading is of capacity to 
hold water. 

But it is strenuously urged upon me, that when a State acts 



through a convention, her action then becomes the action of a 
sovereign State, and that my State, having in convention deter- 
mined to secede, I and all her sons should follow in her track. I 
cannot recognise this logic. '.Undoubtedly, the action of a State, 
in convention, within the sphere of unquestioned authority, is the 
highest form her political action can assume. But if a thing is 
wrong under the higher law of the Federal Constitution, can a 
State make it right by doing it through the medium of a conven- 
tion? Does the formality of a convention, any more than simple 
legislative proceeding, legalize that which is illegal ? The Con- 
stitution says the laws of the Union shall be supreme : does the 
simple act of going into separate convention destroy that supre- 
macy ? The Constitution declares that not one of its provisions 
shall be changed, except by the concurrent assent of three-fourths 
of the States: does a State, by acting in convention, acquire the 
power, of itself, to change it ? The constitution provides expressly 
that no State shall enter into any confederation or alliance : does 
the fact, that the Southern Confederacy was formed by the action 
of separate State conventions, invest that grand usurpation with 
constitutionality, and relieve the actors who set it up of the sin 
and wickedness of a deliberate infraction of an instrument which 
they had in better times acknowledged to confer supreme author- 
ity, and which they had covenanted never to vary but by consul- 
tation with all the States, and the express sanction of a three- 
fourths majority thereof? A State cannot declare war: can it 
acquire that forbidden power by seizing it in convention ? Logi- 
cally, the doctrine is absurd ;\ and it is no better in morality : 
for it makes lawful, by a cheap and easy process, what was un- 
lawful before; and, carried out, it negatives altogether the exist- 
ence of a Confederated Government, and would make every Gov- 
ernment of a Confederation but another name for anarchy, revo- 
lution, and disruption. 

The naked truth is, then, that each State, the moment it as- 
sented to a Constitution which refers all matters of amendment 
to the tribunal of three-fourths of the States, renounced forever 
all right of separate secession, and in every form, whether of con- 
vention, or of ordinary legislation, or of direct vote of the people. 
The renunciation was absolute and unconditional, without any 
limitation, qualification, or reservation. 



8 

This is the common sense view which entirely satisfies my con- 
science as to the position I have taken ; but I am not a little com- 
forted — in the midst of the contumely which my course has pro- 
voked at home — that it is sustained by the most eminent of State- 
rights authorities. 

Mr. Jefferson, while the Virginia convention of 1777 was in ses- 
sion, complimented that admirable provision of the Federal Con- 
stitution (then under consideration in his State) which secured 
the peaceable recourse to a convention of the States. At a later 
day he said that in the ev^ent of serious differences between the 
Federal Government and a State or States, " which could neither 
be avoided nor compromised, a Convention of the States must he galled 
to ascribe the doubtful power to that department which they may 
think best." 

John Taylor, of Caroline, the strictest State-rights politician 
Virginia ever reared, declared that " the supremacy over the Con- 
stitution was deposited in three fourths of the States." That provi- 
sion he denominated as one "/or settling collisions between the 
State and Federal Crovernment amicably, and for avoiding danger- 
ous ^sectional conflicts." 

'^ There is provided a power (said Mr. Calhoun, in 1833) even 
over the Constitution itself, vested in threefourths of the States, 
which Congress has the authority to invoke, and may terminate all 
controversies in reference to the subject, by granting or withholding 
the right in contest. Its authority is acknowledged by all, and to deny 
or resist it would be, on the part of the State, a violation of the 
constitutional compact, and a dissolution of the political association, 
as far as it is concerned. This is the ultimate and highest power, 
and the basis on which the whole system rests." He even declared it 
to be the duty of the Federal Government to " suppress physical 
force as an element of change." 

And again, in 1843, when Secretary of State : " Should the 
General Government and a State come into conflict, the power 
which called the General Government into existence, which gave 
it all its authority, and can enlarge, contract, or abolish its powers 
at its pleasure, may be invoked. The States themselves may be 
appealed to — threefourths of which form a power whose decrees are 
the Constitution itself, and whose voice can silence all discontent. 



9 

" The utmost extent of the power is that a State, acting in its sov- 
ereign capacity as one of the parties to the constitutional compact, 
may compel the Government created by that compact to submit 
a question touching the infraction to the parties who created it." 

\Mr. Ritchie, the editor of the Richmond Enquirer, who for near 
half a century gave law to the State-rights Democracy of Virginia, 
if not of the Union, wrote, in 1814, as follows: "No man, no 
association of men, no State or set of States has a right to with- 
draw from the Union of its own accord. The same power that knit 
us together can alone unTcnit. The same formality that forged the 
links of the Union, is necessary to dissolve it. The majority of 
States which form the Union, must consent to the withdrawal of 
any one branch of it. Until that consent has been obtained, any 
attempt to disolve the Union, or obstruct the efficiency of its Con- 
stitutional laws, is treason — treason to all intents and purposes." 

This logic of these distinguished representatives of the State- 
rights principle leads directly and irresistibly to this result — it is 
a manifest corollary — that so long as the Constitution of the United 
States remains unchanged by the constitutional majority of three- 
fourths of all the States, no one State has the right to secede; the 
Union constitutionally endures; and, constitutionally enduring, it 
is obligatory, in each and every one of its provisions, on every 
citizen of every State of the Union. 

With this truth stamped upon my understanding so that I could 
not resist it, I have not been able, in conscience, by taking an oath 
of exclusive allegiance to Virginia, to renounce that higher alle- 
giance I owe to the Government of the Union. If I am in error, 
my own State, and her own State-rights teachers, indoctrinated 
me with the error. 

And my conscience is eased yet the more when I bring to mind 
the fact that nearly all the great minds of my State have set 
me the example of repudiating the doctrine, and denouncing it as 
treason. I know but one of the really great men of Virginia, that 
ever favored it, and that one was Littleton Waller Tazewell, a man, 
undoubtedly, of extraordinary abilities, but whose great powers, 
like those of Mr. Calhoun, were impaired by a metaphysical sub- 
tlety illy suited to the deduction of truth, and to successful dealing 
with the practical concerns of human government. Both wanted 



10 

the practical common sense and well-balanced judgment which 
made Henry Clay the greatest statesman of his day, if not of any 
day or generation. 

Mr. Tazewell did maintain the theory of constitutional separate 
State secession. In a series of articles over the signature of "A 
Virginian," published in the Norfolk Herald, he made for it the 
ablest argument it ever challenged, or that ever will be made for 
it by mortal intellect. But he stands almost " solitary and alone " 
in his glory. I'Teither "Washington, nor Patrick Henry, nor Jeffer- 
son, nor Madison, nor Chief Justice Marshall, nor John Taylor, 
nor Spencer Roane, nor Geo. W. Summers, nor Judge John Scott, 
nor Judge Robert Stanard, concurred with him. These authori- 
ties will be regarded, I am sure, a full offset against the opinions 
of Mr. Tazewell, and on such authorities I am quite content to 
rest my defence for not following my State in her mad plunge 
into secession. 

But there is one chapter in the political history of Virginia 
from which I must quote, because it contains, for us who could 
not abandon the Federal Union, a vindication which must tell 
upon all reasonable minds, and disarm our revilers. 

In 1808, the Madison electors of Virginia met at a social din- 
ner in Richmond. Judge Spencer Roane, then of the Court of 
Appeals, and the Nestor of the State-rights party of his State, pre- 
sided. The electors came from all parts of the State, and were 
men of eminent ability and unsuspected State-rights republican- 
ism. Some of those who participated were Whigs of the Revo- 
lution, fresh, comparatively, from its battle fields and its un- 
tainted halls of legislation. On this interesting occasion, a cer- 
tain toast — not a volunteer, but a regular one — was drunk. What 
was it ? It was nothing more nor less than this : 

" The Union of the States: the majo7'ity must govern ; it is treason 
to secede.^) 

Now, according to these sentiments of the Madisonian era, am 
I a traitor to m}' State because I cannot follow her into disunion, 
and ought I to be asked to take to her an oath of exclusive alle- 
giance? 

From another chapter of Virginia history, I must quote to set 
right a most remarkable error bearing on our subject. 



11 

( The next ablest argument for secession to Mr. Tazewell's, is 
one made some 18 months since by Judge Allen, of the Court of 
Appeals of Virginia, which has done much, more than all others, 
perhaps, to diffuse through the body politic of his State the poison 
of secession. 

But the whole force of his argument rests upon a fallacy, the 
exposure of which utterly annihilates his reasoning. 

The fallacy is this : The Virginia Convention for ratifying the 
Federal Constitution, adopted the following form of ratification : 

^' We, the delegates of the people of Virginia, &c., &c., do, in 
the name and in behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and 
make known, that the 'powers granted under the Constitution, 
being derived from the people of the United States, may he resumed 
BY THEM whensoever the same shall be perverted to their in- 
jury or oppression.' " 

The expression "the people of the United States," is con- 
strued by Judge Allen to mean the people of ^7ie States separately. 
whereas it is manifest that the people of the States as a Unio7i — 
as a Confederation — a sa Crovernment — as a nation — as the peojjle of so 
many States as formed the Union, and could laivfully change it, 
were meant. For the powers granted under the Constitution 
were not granted by a single, separate State, hut by a given number 
of States. Not one State, nor two States, could grant the powers, 
and if any one State — to illustrate the absurdity of the theory — 
could resume the granted powers, any other one State could do 
the like, and so the Federal Government, though designed to 
"form a more perfect Uuion," and to "secure the blessings of 
liberty to ourselves and our posterity," would be the merest rope 
of sand. 

Nobody doubts that the constitutional majority of three-fourths 
of the States may change the form of the Government — may even 
let a particular State out of the Union ; but that any one State 
may let itself out, and resume the powers originally granted, not 
by one State, but by a number of States, is altogether a different 
proposition, and one not to be tolerated on any sound theory of 
government or sound principle of construction. 

But, conceding Judge Allen's theory to be sound, it has no ap- 
plication to the present secession movement; for he does not 
show, nor has any man yet shown, that the powers granted by the 



12 

people in the Federal Constitutiou have ever been ^'■perverted to 
their injury or oppression.'' 

If I travel beyond Virginia, I find abundant accordance with 
the opinions of her own distinguished statesmen. 

In South Carolina — the State that inaugurated the secession 
policy, and that, according to the confessions of her own 
chief public men, has been striving for more than thirty years to 
sever the Union — it was held by her Supreme Court that her citi- 
zens owe primary allegiance to the Government of the United 
States, and a subordinate one to their State. (Case of State vs. 
Hunt; 2 Hill's S. C. Reps., p. 1.) 

Mississippi, too, among the most rampant and infatuated of the 
secession States, in 1851, in a convention of her people, adopted 
the following resolution : 

" Resolved., That, in the opinion of this convention, the asserted 
right of secession from the Union, on the part of a State or 
States, is utterly unsanctio7ied by the Federal Constitution, which 
was framed to establish, and not to destroy, the Union of the 
States." 

General Jackson said, in 1833: 

"Their object is disunion; but be not deceived bynames — 
disunion, by armed force, is treason." 

Judge Iredell and Goy. Davie, of North Carolina, two of her 

most distinguished citizens, and Charles Cottsworth Pinckney, of 

South Carolina, bitterly disputed the right of secession. 

And Hon. Howell Cobb, in 1851, used this language: 

" When asked to concede the right of a State to secede at 
pleasure from the Union, with or without just cause, we are called 
upon to admit that the framers of the Constitution did that which 
was never done by any other people possessed of their good sense 
and intelligence — that is, to provide, in the very organization of the 
Government, for its dissolution. I have no hesitation in declar- 
ing that the convictions of my own judgment are well settled, 
that no such principle was contemplated in the adoption of our 
Constitution." 

And to come, lastly, to that highest and most conclusive au- 
thority, to which all good citizens bow in unreluctant acquies- 
cence, the Supreme Court of the United States has forever settled 
the unconstitutionality of secession. 



13 

*^In the case of Cohens vs. Virginia, Chief Justice Marshall, in 
delivering the opinion of the court, ruled as follows : 

" The people made the Constitution, and the people can un- 
make it. It is the creature of their will, and lives only by their 
will. But this supreme and irresistible power to make or un- 
make resides in the whole body of the people, a?ic^ not in any sub- 
division of them. The attempt of any of the parts to exercise it is 
usurpation, and ought to be rejjelled by those to ivhom the people have 
delegated their p>oiver of repelling it.'' 

Here, on this broad, firm ground — the adjudication of the high- 
est judicial tribunal of my country — I stand, and on it, so help me 
God, I mean to stand while I live. If I did not stand content on 
this rock of deliant safety, and from its proud summit laugh to 
scorn the impotent lashings of the angry waves beneath, I should be 
unworthy of the blessinge of this great, free Government of ours ; 
for the experience of all the vvorld testifies that, after all, the 
safest reliance for human liberty, its most impregnable bulwark, 
is to be found in the judicial tribunals. Please tell my old friends 
who think me traitor for not going with my State, and who wish 
me to take an oath of allei;-iance to her, independently, and to the 
Southern Confederacy, that the Supreme Court of the United 
States, John Marshall being Chief Justice, tell me that if I com- 
ply I shall do an unconstitutional, unlawful, wicked act, and that 
therefore I cannot and will not do it. 

The truth is, our State has been so capricious in her political 
rulings, that her citizens may well halt before following her 
blindly. In 1798, she planted herself on the position that the 
Federal Government should not be resisted except in case of " de- 
liberate, palpable, and dangerous infractions of the Constitution." 
Obeying this her ancient ruling, I cannot go with her into seces- 
sion, for I know of no "deliberate, palpable, and dangerous in- 
fraction " of her constitutional rights. The Federal Government 
has never done her a wrong that I know of, of any kind. In 1849, 
she declared, by legislative resolves, that if Congress should abol- 
ish slavery in the District of Columbia, or interfere with the slave 
trade between the States, or with slavery within the States, or ap- 
ply the Wilmot Proviso to the common territories, she would 
"resist at all hazards and to the last extremity." But not one of 
these things has been done by Congress. And so, in 1851, she 



14 

approved by an unanimous vote of her General Assembly that 
measure of peace and concord, the Compromise of 1850; and 
now, alas ! without the commission of any fresh outrage by the 
Federal Government or the people of the north, save the election 
of the man of their choice to the Presidency, she allows herself 
to be dragged over the precipice of disunion ! 

What, in this conflict of her own positions, must I do? Must 
I be draffffed alona; with her? No — I cannot: I must, as a citi- 
zen, judge for myself, and follow whither conscience and duty lead. 

Will I, then, never go with my State, as I have been often asked 
by my disunion friends? Are there no circumstances under 
which I would have her secede? Will I be always a submis- 
sionist? 

I answer: there are circumstances under which I would follow 
my State "at all hazards and to the last extremity." When she 
is right in her resistance — when she is grievously and insuffer- 
ably wronged and oppressed — when she is so clearly in the right 
that I can feel conscious that the God of battles will be with her 
in her fight — then I will go with her and die for her, but not be- 
fore. 

A certain great man — one of the most distinguished of men — 
clarum et venerabile nomen — a man whom I loved and admired while 
living, and whose memory I fondly reverence — the first statesman 
of his day — among the wisest the world ever saw — the noblest, 
most unselfish, most disinterested of patriots — whose rank was 
with Madison, and Lowndes, and Canning, and Pitt, and Peel, — 
who was one of the " bright particular" ornaments, not of his coun- 
try only, but of the world: a countryman of ours answering faith- 
fully this description, once used the following language: 

"I have heard with pain and regret a confirmation of the re- 
mark I made, that the sentiment of disunion is becoming familiar. 
I hope it is confined to South Carolina. I do not regard as my 
duty what the honorable Senator seems to regard as his. If Ken- 
tucky to-morrow unfurls the banner of resistance, unjustly, I will 
never fight under that banner. I owe a paramount allegiance to 
the whole Union — a subordinate one to my own State. When my 
State is right — when she has cause for resistance — when tyranny and 
wrong ^ and oppression insufferable arise — I wilLshare her fortunes. 
But if she summons me to the battle field, or to support her in any 
cause that is unjust against the Union, never, never will I engage 
with her in such a cause.'' 



15 

The author of these admirable sentiments was the author of 
that other immortal one, " I had rather be right than be presi- 
dent" — Henry Clay. 

Now, when any .of my old line, Henry Clay Whig friends at 
home — you were one — should ask when it is that I will go with 
ray State, let them be referred to these sentiments of Mr. Clay, 
and from them receive my answer. Let them be told that, in my 
best judgment, the State is not rigid in taking the part she has in 
secession — " that tyranny, wrong, and oppression insufferable " 
have not yet arisen — that she has no more cause of complaint 
now than she had in 1851, when she virtually endorsed these 
opinions of the great Kentuckian by approving and accepting 
the compromise measures of 1850 as a "full and final settlement 
of all the agitating questions to which they related," and that, 
accordingly, a state of things exists which subordinates the alle- 
giance I owe the State to that higher " paramount allegiance 
which I owe the whole Union." 

But it is urged upon me, again, that if the secession of the 
Southern States linds no warrant in the Constitution, it has war- 
rant in the law of Revolution. 

This is a clear change of the issue. Not one of the seceding 
States rested its action on the right of Revolution. All appealed 
to the high pretension that to secede was matter of right — of 
magna eharta — of Constitutional privilege — of reserved right, 
overcoming all the express provisions of the National Constitu- 
tion. But change the issue to Revolution, and a j'et flimsier pre- 
text is substituted. 

The right of Revolution is not an arbitrary thing. It is a princi- 
ple ; and a principle, too, of the utmost consequence in the great 
practical concerns of mankind. Men associated in a society may 
not at will throw off its trammels, otherwise the peace of the 
community would never be safe. Disorder, civil commotion, vio- 
lence, bloodshed and war, would stand ever ready for the beckon 
of the vicious and the desperate. There would be no stability in 
the rights of property, or of any of the personal rights. There 
would be no repose for innocent and helpless women and children, 
and other non-combatants of society. Society, indeed, would be 
but a series of commotions and desolations. Revolution, then. 



16 

being a principle, what is the principle ? It is philosophically and 
beautifully illustrated in the celebrated lines of Shakespeare; 
" rather endure those ills we have, than fly to others that we know 
not of," and it is this: that existing arrangements of society and 
government are not to be disturbed to the extent of force and war, 
unless on theground of grievous wrong or intolerable oppression. 
When these arise, it is the great privilege of man, as it is his 
great instinct, to rise up in all his majesty and might, and resist 
even unto war, blood, and death. 

This being the principle, it has no application to, and is no justi- 
fication for, the dismemberment of the Union by the seceding 
States. 

On the day of the Presidential election, in November, 1860, 
from which period the active movements towards secession date, 
the country was never in a more prosperous condition, or its peo- 
ple happier. The effects of the commercial revulsion of 1857 had 
almost disappeared under the recuperating agency of bountiful 
crops, and peace, plenty, and content reigned through the land. 
This state of prosperity and repose was disturbed for no adequate 
cause. In my judgment, we have been precipitated into civil 
war, with all the revolting incidents of social and physical deso- 
lation, without any cause at all. I lament to say it; but it is true 
that this whole secession movement is nothing more nor less than 
downright rebellion, and rebellion against the best and the most 
parental Government that ever a people had. 

In Virginia, it is complained that great outrages have been 
committed on Southern rights. By whom? Certainly not by the 
Federal Government, of whose action alone is there danger. If 
any outrages have been perpetrated, what are they ? I know them 
not ; no, not one. I frequently appealed to the leading seces- 
sionists of Virginia, while there, both in public and private, in 
the legislative halls, on the hustings, at the cross-streets and the 
cross-roads, to name to me one wrong which the Government 
they were so anxious to subvert had ever done the South, and I 
was never answered by any specification. I heard, ever and anon, 
some indefinite grumbling about the Wilmot Proviso, and Per- 
sonal Liberty laws, and interference with the rights of slavehold- 
ers ; but I never met the first man who could point his finger to 



IT 

the first act of actual aggression by the Federal Government upon 
the rights of the South. 

So far from the commission of any actual aggression, I must 
say, and do say, that the course of the Federal Government — of 
Congress, the only practical representative of that Government 
and the people — has been everything the South could ask. First, 
on the demand of the South, Congress enacted, not one, but two 
fugitive slave laws. The first did not suit, and a better one was 
asked for and obtained. The South assented, almost unanimously, 
to the Missouri Compromise ; but, becoming dissatisfied with it, 
asked for the obliteration of the geographical line between slavery 
and freedom, and Congress hearkened to the demand, the pecu- 
liar Northern friends of the South, in Congress and out of it, sus- 
taing the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The South pro- 
tested against the application of the Wilmot Proviso to the com- 
mon territories, and Congress listened. No law applying the 
Wilmot Proviso has been enacted. On the contrary, several Ter- 
ritorial laws, embracing the whole disposable territory of the Uni- 
ted States, have been passed, which contained no prohibition a^ 
to slavery. And now any citizen is free to go to any of the Ter- 
ritories with his slaves, if he chooses, unmolested by any action 
of the Federal Government, and with all the protection open to 
him which the courts can give to his rights of property. The 
South complained of the Personal Liberty statutes of the North, 
for which the Federal Government is not responsible ; and yet 
what did Congress do in this regard ? To quiet the apprehen- 
sions of the Southern people, and to preserve the national quiet, 
it did all it could do — it passed, hy a vote of 151 to 14 — almost 
unanimous — a resolution, recommending to the Northern States the 
repeal of their Personal Liberty laws ; and there can be no doubt, 
that if the South had not precipitated itself into secession, this 
patriotic and friendly recommendation of the people's represen- 
tatives would have had its effect in the repeal of most, if not all, 
the offensive statutes. The South expressed its apprehension — 
for which there never was any just ground — that slavery in the 
States would be assailed, and said new sfuarantees were wanted 
when Congress, hy the necessary constitutional majority, recom- 
mended to the States the adoption of an amendment to the Constitu- 
3 



18 

tion (proposed, I think, by Mr. Seward) which should forever forbid 
the interference hy Congress with Slavery in the States. [This propo- 
sition was voted against by Mr. Toombs and Mr. Davis.] John 
Brown's invasion of Virginia was denounced as a great outrage; 
and, to prevent the repetition of the like, it was proposed in the 
Senate Compromise Committee, by Mr. Seward, to pass a law to 
punish all persons hereafter making such invasion, and though 
voted for by all the Northern members of the committee, the 
proposition failed for want of the co-operation of the Southern 
members. 

As to the great matter of slavery then, let us see how the case 
stands, or how it might have stood, had the seceding states been a 
little more patient. The proposed amendment to prohibit forever 
all interference with slavery, had been early after the election of 
Mr. Lincoln, submitted by Congress to the States. The legisla- 
tures of three-fourths of the States, or the people of three-fourths 
of the States in Convention might have adopted it, and thus made 
it a part of the Constitution. Had all the slave States adopted it, 
^here is no doubt a sufficient number of the free States would 
have co-operated to have secured the constitutional majority of 
three-fourths, and then what would have been the result? Why, 
that would have been accomplished for which the whole South 
had professed to bo so anxious — Slavery in the States would have 
been 'perpetually protected ; the agitation of the long -disturbing ques- 
tion would have ceased except with a few demented fanatics ; and the 
concord of former days zvould have been restored. 

Slavery in the States being thus rendered impregnable, there 
would have been nothing left of this subject to disturb the na- 
tional harmony but the Territorial question, and that is of no 
practical moment, for there is not a foot ofthe present Territories 
that is adapted to slave labor, and to which slave labor could pro- 
fitably go. In New Mexico, for example, five times as large as 
New York, there are but twenty-six slaves, who are the body ser- 
vants of Government and Army officers, though slavery is there 
legal and protected by a slave code. Of what practical conse- 
quence to the south then, is the right of carrying slaves to terri- 
tories from which the God of nature, by His laws of soil and 
. climate and by the instincts He has planted in man, has forever 
e^xcluded , th^qm ? And why should the north care to prohibit 



19 

slavery in territories, into which, for the inhibitions named, it 
can never be introduced ? 

In fact, all that the south can properly demand in regard to 
slavery in the Territories, as Judge Campbell, late of the Supreme 
Court, contended, is, that the status quo be observed, I quote his 
wise and patriotic words, addressed to the people of Alabama : 

" The great subject of disturbance — that of slavery in the Ter- 
ritories — rests upon a satisfactory foundation, and we have noth- 
ing to ask, except that the status quo be respected." 

Well, the stat7is quo has been respected — I think, scrupulously 
respected. Notwithstanding the repeal of the Missouri Compro- 
mise, which so much and so justly offended Northern sensibili- 
ties, and in defiance of the outside pressure which the repeal of 
that measure of plighted faith and honor generated. Congress has 
not applied the Wilmot Proviso to any of the Territories. It 
has wisely left the matter to the laws of God — of soil, production, 
climate, and profit — and to the courts, to which the whole subject 
so properly belongs. 

Now, with the promise of perpetual guarantees for slavery in 
the States, and the observance of the status quo as to the Territo- 
ries, what reason was there that Virginia and her deluded sisters 
should have seceded from our blessed Union ? 

I thought, as I still think, that all the slave States should have 
submitted the amendment of the Constitution forbidding fu- 
ture interference with slavery in the States to their Legislatures 
or people, and obtained in that way the security desired for their 
peculiar institution. Then, instead of the civil war whose demon 
bowlings now roar through the land, and whose desolation 
is carried to the hearth, and the fire-side, and every rehition and 
interest of life, we should have continued to realize lliat peace 
and happiness which, under our glorious institutions, h<'i\'e blessed 
us above all the people of the earth. Oh ! what a chance did we 
lose of saving our country and ourselves ! How mad was it, 
with so cheering a prospect for the happy solution of all our difii- 
culties, to plunge into the gulf of ruin forever ! 

And why, let me ask, did we 7iot make the effort for peace and 
salvation ? Alas ! I fear there was a foregone conclusion to destroy 
the Union, without regard to wrongs, or the remedies for them ! 



20 

What does the refusal of the south to accept Mr. Seward's amend- 
ment indicate but that no compromise was desired, and that dis- 
union was resolved on under any and all circumstances? Why 
was not the north met half-way in proposals for peace and guar- 
antees? 

And, at the time of Mr, Lincoln's election, what semblance of 
danger was there to the south ? There was a clear opposition 
majority of 21 in the House of Representatives, and a conclusive 
majority in the Senate. How, under such circumstances, could 
the South have been harmed ? Could slavery have been abolish- 
ed in the District of Columbia? Could it have been prohibited 
in the Territories? Could it have been touched in the States? 
Was it possible, under the circumstances, that Mr. Lincoln could 
have harmed the south a hair's breadth, even bad he the dispo- 
sition ? 

Besides having both branches of Congress on its side, had not 
the south the Supreme Court? Had not the decisions of that 
high tribunal leaned to the side of slavery and slave holders? 
And had not Congress, in the several territorial laws, referred all 
rights of property — slave and other — to that august and trust- 
worthy tribunal ? 

Then, the fact is simply this : that with an entire absence of 
all aggressive legislation, the south had the Legislature and Judi- 
ciary to itself. Only the Executive was against it, or was sup- 
posed to be against it, and that branch was impotent for injuiy, 
because an inimical measure could never reach it. The south, 
indeed, had every thing its own way, was as impregnable as a well 
equipped army behind a strong entrenchment would be from the 
outside assaults of a few ragged regiments armed with pop guns — 
and yet the south, with horse-leech avidity, cries : " Give us all — 
give us every thing, or we will dash the Ui:ion into fragments !" 

Surely the history of mankind affords no parallel to this re- 
markable infatuation I It stands alone. (^.There has never been 
before so impious a defiance of the goodness of the Creator — such 
a sporting with the beneficence of Providence — so mad a case of 
self-ruin and self-destruction ! 

My own deep belief is, that those who busied themselves in 
this great wickedness, will never be able to account to the Chris- 



21 

tian world for their participation in it. How I thank God that I 
have had no part or lot in the matter ! And as each sand of the 
unhappy conflict runs out, the more thankful am I, that I had the 
firmness to repudiate and reject all the projects of the secessionists ! 

The proposition so often submitted to me that Mr. Lincoln's elec- 
tion is adequate cause for a dissolution of the Union, I look upon 
with absolute horror. The doctrine that the election by a legal 
majority of the people of the President of their choice is a suffi- 
cient reason for the dissolution of the Union, is so monstrous, so 
antagonistical to all the theory and maxims of popular and Repub- 
lican Government, so replete with radicalism and lawlessness, so 
perilous to all the vested interests of society, so fraught with mor- 
al and social chaos and ruin, so barbarous, that I dismiss it, once 
and forever, with my utter and eternal abhorrence. I will not 
even quote against it the authority of the great men of the south, 
of all parties, who have repudiated the detestable heresy. Its own 
blackness is its own best exponent. 

And the folly of secession — of resorting to the cartridge-box 
instead of the ballot-box for redress — is more apparent still when 
we look at the Presidential vote of 1860. 

The whole opposition vote was 2,804,000; the Republican vote, 
1,857,000: majority against the Rupublicans, nearly a million. 
Now, with this million conservative pro-southern majority, would 
it not have been far wiser (as I argued on another occasion) to 
have made another trial of strength before throwing aside the 
best Government the world ever saw ? Is not a quiet victory at 
the polls preferable to a revolution, in which the sword is to decide 
the issue? Should we have precipitated disunion bjMbur years 
for a danger which was that length of time distant at least, and 
which by the end of that period might have vanished altogether 
by a change in the political sentiment of the country? Should 
we for an imaginary peril have taken disunion four whole years 
by the forelock? Was the Union of so little value that we should 
absolutely have made haste to destroy it — to kill it ofi' before its 
time had come ? 

To the idea that the election of Mr. Lincoln evinced a section- 
alism and hostility at the North which would endanger the insti- 
tution of slavery, it is aufhcient to reply that the facts show It to 
be utterly unsound. 



22 

In a Union Address to my late constituents, published in Jan- 
uary, 1861, I used the following language : 

" Perhaps, no presidential vote was ever cast that was more complex in its charac- 
ter than that which was cast in November last. There were scores upon scores of 
thousands, even of the democracy, that were bitter in their hostility to Mr. Buchan- 
an's administration. Large numbers regarded it as corrupt, for corruption had been 
charged from high democratic sources. The Lecompton policy had lost to the ad- 
ministration, and driven over to the Republican ranks an army of its former friends. 
The financial policy of the government, based on constant loans and issues of treasury 
notes, instead of duties on imports under a properly regulated tariff, turned the at- 
tention of a large number of the people of the North to a change of administration. 
Pennsylvania, always conservative until, desperate for the proper governmental ap- 
preciation of her material interests, she was compelled to take sides with the candi- 
date most likely to succeed, (who was undoubtedly Mr. Lincoln,) cast her vote, 
mainly, on the tariff question. Now, all these classes of voters, numbering, it must 
be, several hundreds of thousands, desired a change of administration, and very natu- 
rally looked to the most available nominee, and regarding Mr. Lincoln, in consequence 
of the hopeless divisions of the democracy, as that most available nominee, cast their 
votes for him, without meaning to endorse his peculiar views on the subject of slavery. 
Disunion, then, on the idea of an irreconcilable Northern enmity to Southern institu- 
tions, rests upon a pretext unsound, unsubstantial, and suicidal." 

And thus is annihilated another favorite pretext of the dis- 
unionists. 

As for the Personal Liberty laws, no one ever lost a slave by 
them. Mostly, they are mere anti-kidnapping statutes, and whe- 
ther constitutional or not, they should be to the South a matter 
ter of indifl'erence. Nor have all the free States passed such laws. 
Neither New York, nor Ohio, nor Minnesota, nor Iowa, nor Illi- 
nois, nor Indiana, nor New Jersey, has one. In Indiana and Illi- 
nois, slaves are arrested without process and returned to their 
masters. The wives of Kentuckians go into those States on social 
visits, unattended by their husbands, but with their colored domes- 
tics. These facts I have heretofore stated, on the authority of 
letters of Hon. Robert Mallory and W. R. Kinney, esq., of Ken- 
tuckv, who reside on or near the Ohio river. Illinois has a statute 
which allows slaves to stay with their masters sixty days within 
her territory; and New Jersey not only allows the transit of slaves 
with their masters, but has a fugitive slave law of her own to 
aid in the execution of the federal law of the same kind. But 
should we, for these practically harmless personal liberty statutes, 
destroy our glorious Union ? I would not, if every page of every 
Northern statute book were filled w^ith them. No : I wnll stand 
yet by the Union of our fathers, trusting that the " sober second 
thought" and the prevalence of that feeling which, "in the times 
that tried men's souls," put Massachusetts " shoulder to shoul- 



iC o 



i}0 



der" with Virginia, will strike from the statute books all these 
irritating enactments, and believing as well as hoping, that the 
patriotic recommendation of the representatives of the people in 
the House of Commons of the nation, will lead to that "consum- 
mation so devoutly to be wished." Some of them, indeed, have 
already been repealed. 

But are we of the South ourselves without reproach in the mat- 
ter of the enactment of offensive laws ? I regret to say, and I say 
it with a sense of shame, that the law of South Carolina in re- 
gard to colored seamen — the State that stands in the front rank, 
and that is the guiltiest of the guilty in this enormous wickedness 
of secession — is just as offensive, as violative of the great princi- 
ples of civil liberty, as repugnant to the spirit and the letter of 
our blessed constitution, as the worst personal liberty law of the 
northern States. 

I act, in this matter, on the law of offset. Both sections have done 
wrong, and I let the misdoing of the one stand against the mis- 
doing of the other, and let the Union rise up in all its lustrous 
glory between both to rebuke the sectional spirit that would stand 
between it and the accomplishment of the grand destiny of popu- 
lar institutions in America. 

With regard to the Fugitive Slave Law — that fruitful source of 
agitation both north and south, and I might add of misapprehen- 
sion — it is enough to say that it has been executed, with all rea- 
sonable fidelity and success. The idea generally prevailing in 
the South that no fugitive slave is ever returned and the law 
never executed, is entirely erroneous. Many are quietly sur- 
rendered whose cases are never heard of: only those cases reach 
the public in which there is some tumult, or in those rare cases 
in which wicked people resist the execution of the law, and which, 
therefore, make a noise in the newspapers, and furnish material 
for declamation on the stump and in the bar-rooms. These cases 
are the exceptions, not the general rule. But for the tediousness 
of the detail, I could furnish almost a volume of cases of the suc- 
cessful execution of the law. The grand jury of the northern 
district of Ohio indicted seven persons for resisting the marshal, 
and I believe they were all found guilty, and punished with fine 



24 

and imprisonment. A clergyman was convicted in Ohio of the 
same offence, and sentenced to an imprisonment of six months 
and a fine of |1,500. There are several persons now in jail at 
Chicago who were convicted in an Illinois court by an Illinois 
jury for assisting in the rescue of a fugitive slave, and who were 
fined $1,500 each, for the non-payment of which they are now 
suffering the pains of a dreary imprisonment. Less than a year 
ago I remember that several slaves were arrested in Cincinnati, 
and quietly restored to their masters; and a journal of that city 
declared at the time, that "during the preceding three years not 
a colored person arrested on a warrant of a United States com- 
missioner, had been set free or escaped." Judge Douglas de- 
clared in the Senate that Judge McLean had always executed the 
law with scrupulous fidelity. The Supreme Court of Massachu- 
setts, consisting of five Republican judges, unanimously pro- 
nounced the fugitive slave law constitutional, and " binding on 
the people of Massachusetts." Since the election of Mr. Lincoln, 
several fugitives were arrested in Chicago, examined before a 
United States commissioner at Springfield, and remanded to their 
owners in St. Louis; and since this arrest and rendition, it is well 
known that large numbers of fugitive slaves, finding that the law 
is to be enforced under the present as under past administrations, 
have been flocking to Canada for an asylum ; and ever since the 
secession of the southern States, fugitives have been peaceably ar- 
rested in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and delivered to their 
owners. 

I deal with this subject practically, and on this point I quote 
again from the address already referred to : 

'' The question, then, comes up, (which I have well weighed and considered) is 
there enough of grievance and of wrong in these personal liberty laws to induce dis- 
ruption? Ought we, can we, for these dead statutes, and a few exceptional cases of 
escapes of fugitive slaves, forego the priceless, incalculable benefits of a Union which 
was the handiwork of Washington, and Franklin, and Madison, and Gerry, and Robert 
Morris, and Governeur Morris, and Laurens, and Pinckney, and Hamilton, and which 
has made the people of the United States the freest, the happiest, and the greatest nation 
on the globe ? If we do, the madness and the folly of the deed will be without a pa- 
rallel in the annals of human weakness and folly. 

" And'another great, practical inquiry for the Southern Slaveholder, is, will secession 
remedy or alleviate this evil of the escape of his slaves ? No : it will aggravate the griev- 
ance a thousand fold. The Union dissolved, and with its dissolution the fugitive 
slave law gone ; the obligation for the surrender of fugitive slaves cancelled; with 
more than a million and a half of friends turned into foes ; with the fierce animosities 
and implacable enmities which have ever attended the disruption of once friendly 



25 

and confederated States; with none, cither in law or friendship, to intercept the fu- 
gitive in his flight to his great asylum in Canada: with Canada brought down to the 
very border line of the border slave States, so that the underground railroad will no 
longer be needed, and slaves have but to cross a boundary to be free: I say, in this 
stale of things, under the mistaken policy of secession, we shall lose one hundred, per- 
haps one thousand slaves where we now lose one ; our slave property will be worthless ; 
and the border slave States, however reluctantly, will be driven, " dragged " to gen- 
eral emancipation, or to a ruinous sacrifice of their slave propertj'. What will a slave 
>)e worth in Virginia, or Maryland, or Kentucky, or Missouri, when, to obtain hie 
freedom, he has but to cross a river or a line ? 

" Then if we ^alue our slave property, and would hinder the escape of our slaves 
into the free States, we had better adhere to the Union. la that Union, and there 
oaly, lies the safety of the Southern slaveholder !" 

Oh ! nad we not better have lost twice or thrice as many of our 
slaves as we usually have, than to have given up the peace, and 
quiet, and domestic happiness, and material comfort which we 
all enjoyed under the Union of our fathers ? Is the loss of a few 
slaves to the south to be put in computation with that loss of so- 
cial happiness and sacrifice of property and material prosperity, 
with the desolated hearths and ruined homes, with the untold 
agony of heart and the millions of crushed hopes, and the count- 
less sufferings of the innocent and helpless, with the distrust, hate, 
and alienation that have followed in the track of this great de- 
lusion of secession ? Before God and man I say it, I would have 
preferred to have had the loss of fugitive slaves trebled rather 
than to have had taken from me the inestimable blessings of the 
Union. 

And, after all, has not the loss by the escape of our slaves been 
greatly overrated? Mr. Everett showed in his address at the 
Academy of Music in New York, and from the census returns, 
that, in 1850, the number of fugitive slaves from all the slave States 
was only -^^^ of one per cent, and that in 1860 it was only -^\ of one 
per cent. — a loss too insignificant to be thought of in comparison 
with the priceless blessings of the Union ! The loss to the drovers 
of cattle, in Virginia, in every drive, is generally about 10 per 
cent, while to owners of slaves, by escapes, it is only -^V of one 
per cent., and I do not doubt that the annual loss to the drovers 
of the State in getting their cattle to market is of larger pecuni- 
ary amount than that of all the slaveholders of the State by the 
escape of fugitive slaves. 

At all events, it is an unfortunate period to dissolve the Union 
for the loss of fugitive slaves, for the ratio of loss is regularly di- 
4 



26 

minishing under the more efficient fugitive slave law of 1850, and 
an improved public sentiment, and doubtless it would have con- 
tinued to diminish. By the census of 1860, it appears that in the 
border slave States one slave escaped to every 2,527, and in I860, 
one to every 3,276; or, by Mr. Everett's figures, ^l of one per 
cent, in 1850, and J^ of one per cent, in 1860 — a result which 
demonstrates that the people of the south were gradually but 
surely acquiring additional security for their peculiar property. 

One most remarkable result exhibited by the census returns, 
and I have done with this branch of the subject. I find that in 
I860, Texas lost 16 slaves — one in every 11,274 ; Alabama 36 — 
one in every 12,087 ; Florida 11 — one in every 5,614 ; Georgia 23 
— one in every 20,096 ; Louisiana 46 — one in every 7,228 ; and 
South Carolina 23 — one in every 17,501 — while the border States 
lost as follows : Virginia one in every 4,195 ; Missouri one in 
every 1,161 ; Kentucky one in every 1,895 ; and Maryland one in 
every 753 ! These statistics show that so far as fugitive slaves 
and fugitive slave laws are concerned, the cotton States have far 
too insignificant an interest to excuse them for trifling, as they 
have, with the Union and the interests of the border States. Think 
of it — Georgia, losing only one slave in every 20,096, dragging 
Virginia out of the Union, who loses one in every 4,195; and 
South Carolina, losing one in every 17,501, dragging out Mary- 
land, who loses one in every 758, and Kentucky, who loses one in 
ever}' 1895 ! Virginians lost their manhood when they submitted 
to be thus dragged. I cannot be one of the dragged. 

The constant slavery agitation at the North, I concede, is prop- 
erly ofl:ensive to the South. It is wrong, and 1 should be glad to 
see our Northern brethren desisting from that which can have no 
eftect but to irritate, and to weaken the chords that bind us to a 
common Government. But we of the South are not altogether 
without sin in the premises, for we ourselves have indulged in the 
largest latitude in the discussion of the slavery question, I have ever 
thou2:ht, to the detriment of the slaveholdino^ interest, though 
Senator Hammond and Mr. Stephens, and some other prominent 
southern men assert that " slavery has been greatly strengthened 
and fortified by agitation," and that "happy results for the south 
have come of the Abolition discussion." If the latter opinion be 



27 

true, then the South had no cause of complaint, and certainly 
no need of upsetting the Union on account of the anti-slavery 
discussion. Besides, this anti-alavery discussion has been going 
on for long years past, and if such discussion furnished just cause 
for a dissolution of the Union, it should have been dissolved 
long ago. But we did not, on this account, proceed to dissolution 
under past Administrations. Why should we do it under Mr. 
Lincoln's? Is the anti-slavery agitation any worse under Mr. 
Lincoln's Administration than it was under Mr. Fillmore's, or 
Mr. Polk's, or Mr. Pierce's, or Mr. Buchanan's? 

Verily, I must have far stronger reasons than this for surren- 
dering the thousand blessings of the American Union. Were 
I to advocate its destruction on so unsubstantial a pretext — for it 
does not rise to the dignity of a reason — I should commit a crime 
against humanity I could never expiate, and for which I should 
deserve never to be forgiven by the Christian world. 

No : I ivill not, because a few mad fanatics desecrate the pulpit 
and the hustings by Abolition ravings, give up the unrivaled 
blessings of the best Government on earth. These deluded and 
wicked men do not represent the mass of the Northern people. 
When they shall, or when the Federal Government shall practi- 
cally assail the institution of slavery, it will be quite time enough 
to think of disunion as a remedy against anti-slavery operations. 

You will see, from the views I have expressed to you, that 
all along I have taken a practical view of all the questions con- 
nected with this deplorable conflict. I have sought to take coun- 
sel of judgment rather than of passion, and the farther the con- 
flict progresses, alas! how painfully am I reminded that I have 
chosen the wiser part! I have had constantly in my mind, and 
there to the end they will be kept and cherished, those remarka- 
ble sentiments of wisdom expressed by Judge Campbell to his 
fellow-citizens of Alabama, which should be written in letters of 
living light over the lintel of every American door : "' IN MY 
OPINION, SEPARATE STATE ACTION WILL RESULT 
IN THE DISCREDIT AND DEFEAT OF EVERY MEAS- 
URE FOR REPARATION OR SECURITY." 

There are yet other reasons why I could not follow our State 
into secession. Conceding that the citizen is bound by the action 



28 

of his State, I am released from the obligation now, because I do 
not believe that the act of secession in V^irginia is truly the act 
of her people. It was not a choice of her people. I lament to 
say it, but the proofs are overwhelming, that outside pressure, in- 
timidation, coercion, misrepresentation, and sensation appeals, 
constantly made by the press and the politicians to the passions 
and prejudices of the masses, forbade all freedom of thought and 
of action. Let us see. 

The press and the politicians with untiring eifort impressed 
it upon the people that the Lincoln Government would not 
leave them the semblance of a right. Hence, it was the com- 
mon popular expression, put into the mouths of the uninformed 
by designing disunionists — '"v.^e can't submit to a Black Repub- 
lican Administration." And those who put this clap-trap argu- 
ment upon the lips of the deceived, never took the care to tell 
the victims of their deception that there was a decided majority 
in both houses of Congress against the Black Republican Admin- 
istration, and that that Administration was, therefore, powerless 
to harm the South. 

The people were told, next, that they would be far better off 
with an independent Southern republic than with the old Union, 
and that their taxes would be less, because then the South would 
no longer pay tribute to the north, and because there would be 
then no tariffs, but free trade, and direct trade, and cheap goods: 
appeals of all the most likely to delude the common mind. 

Thirdly, it was represented with ceaseless repetition that if 
Virginia seceded, there would be no war — that her influence and 
power were so great that the moment she seceded, all the border 
States would follow, and that then the Federal Government would 
"back down, " and recognize the Southern Confederacy. 

It was next strenuousl}' urged that the northern people would 
not fight. Senator Hammond said in a public speech that the 
moment it should be announced that eight cotton States had 
seceded, "the north would grow pale and tremble, and revolution 
would be there, not here." And it was said, further, that, if it 
came to a fight one southern man was equal to five northern. 

And further to inveigle the people into secession, it was ernesth'- 
insisted that the Democracy of the North were the natural allies, 
and had always been the friends, of the south, and that one-half 



// 

29 

of them would be on the side of the south, and that the north 
being thus divided and the south united, the latter would have 
its independence established without incurring any of the conse- 
quences of war. 

Later in the struggle, the secessionists mended their hold, and 
advanced to more passionate appeals. The people were told that 
the war was begun by Mr. Lincoln, and against the south, and 
to subjugate the South. 

Then again it was urged that the war, thus begun by Mr. 
Lincoln and against the south, had for one of its objects the 
abolition of slavery. 

And lastly, with a voheraence amounting to phrensy, the alarm 
was rung night and day, that Mr. Lincoln's proclamation of April 
15, '61, was an out and out actual declaration of war against the 
south. 

These artful and passionate appeals so fired the popular mind, 
and so stimulated coercion and intimidation that a popular con- 
vention was called to assemble at Richmond, (I think on the 
15th of April,) for the purpose, it was generally supposed and as 
I solemnly believe, to drive the Convention (then sitting) into the 
adoption of a secession ordinance, I solemnly assert my belief, 
from what I heard and observed, that if this Convention had met 
and acted, it would, by force and arms, have turned the Conven- 
tion out of doors, unless it would have agreed to pass instantly a 
secession ordinance. 

The proclamation of Mr. Lincoln calling out the militia to 
execute the laws, which, as I have just said, was proclaimed and 
denounced with demoniac excitement as an actual and deliberate 
declaration of war against the south, forestalled the purposed action 
of this popular Convention, having produced the result designed 
by the Convention, the passage of a secession ordinance, which 
took place on the 17th of April. 

From the passage of the secession ordinance, to the 23d of May. 
when the final vote of the people was taken on it, the sensation 
efibrts waxed fiercer and more wrathful, misrepresentation was re- 
doubled, and coercion employed in every form, and when the 
hour of voting came, it is useless to say it was not a free vote. 
Had it been an untrammeled vote — a vote uninfiuenced by fear 
or misrepresentation — I believe most solemnly that this hour the 



30 

people of Virginia would dow, instead of suffering all the hor- 
rors of a fratricidal war, be quietly enjojing the manifold bless- 
ings of the Union. 

I hold, with all deference, that a vote of m}^ State, cast under 
such circumstances, is not binding on me as one of her citizens. 
The misrepresentation alone, to say nothing of intimidation and 
other forms of coercion, rendered the vote a fraud upon the elec- 
tive franchise, and fraud vitiates all transactions. 

I claimed the right, as a citizen, to judge the truth or falsehood 
of the various allegations on which the people of my State w^ere 
asked to do the grave act of pulling down the noble fabric of 
Union which their fathers had reared. I did judge, and my judg- 
ment was and is, that the allegations had no foundation in truth 
and fact. 

I did not believe in the wrongs to the south which had been 
charged upon the north. I saw no practical aggression by the 
Federal Government upon the rights of the south. I asked, 
'•where are they?" and echo answered, "where are they?" I 
did not believe that secession could avert war. I did not be- 
lieve in peaceable secession. With the great AVebster, I did not 
believe in the " breaking up of the fountains of the great deep 
without ruffling the surface." I believed the north tvould fight. 
I did not believe that the democracy of the north and west would 
fight for the south against the old flag. I knew full well that 
whenever traitorious hands should dare haul down the nation's 
star-gemmed banner, "the great Beli Roland" would toll, and 
millions would rush from city, country, valley and mountain, to 
fling back its glory-lit folds to the breeze. I did not believe, nor 
do I now, that the Federal Government began the war, nor can 
any man who has the least regard for truth so sa}-. The war was 
beo-un when South Carolina, by secession, broke equally her own 
faith and the laws of the United States. 

The war advanced as each other State successively seceded. 
The war was palpable and unmistakable, and aggressive and 
wicked, whenthe forts, ships, arms, mmts and money of the 
United States were forcibly seized by the Seceding states. If 
the forcible seizure of forts and ships and arms and mints does 



/7^ 
31 

not coustitute war, Id God's name what does? Did not war flame 
when the Confederate States opened their hatteries upon Fort 
Sumter, confessedly the property of the United States? AVhat is 
war but a hostile assault by one nation upon another? And who, 
in this conflict, made the first assault? 

Nor do I believe that Mr. Lincoln's proclamation was war upon 
Virjyinia or the south. And as this proclamation was most suc- 
cessfully wielded for inflaming the popular mind, and did, more 
than all else, perhaps, to induce the secession of Virginia, I note 
the point especially. 

The proclamation was no war upon anybody. It was defence 
from war. Xay, more, it was duty. The President of the CJnited 
States would have been false to duty and to honor, if, after the 
bombardment of Fort Sumter, he had failed to call out the mi- 
litia. I think he should have done so the first moment after his 
inauguration ; for he found, on his accession, several States by 
force resisting the laws of the United States, in actual possession 
of United States forts, and, indeed, in actual, undoubtful rebel- 
lion. Mr. Buchanan had virtually abdicated the Government, 
and surrendered to the open violators of the laws and the avowed 
enemies of the Government, and Mr. Lincoln would have been 
entirely right if he had made the calling out of the militia the 
very first act of his Administration. In not doing so, he exhibited 
especial moderation, prompted, no doubt, by a patriotic desire for 
peaceful adjustment. In any event, he did only what Washing- 
ton had done before him. Washington called out the militia to 
put down the whiskey insurrection in Pennsylvania under the act 
of 1792 ; Mr. Lincoln called it out to suppress a far greater and 
more wicked rebellion, under the act of 1795, which was made 
more stringent than the act of '92, and of indefinite duration, 
whereas the act of '92 was limited to less than three years. These 
modifications were doubtless suggested by the Pennsylvania re- 
bellion. At all events, there was the law — declared by the Su- 
preme Court to be constitutional — in full force ; there it was, 
staring Mr. Lincoln in the face, and commanding him, "when- 
ever the laws of the United States should be opposed, or the ex- 
ecution thereof be obstructed in any State, by combinations too 
powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial pro- 



32 

ceediugs, or by the powers vested in the marshals, to call forth 
the militia to suppress the combinations, and see the laws duly 
execute'd." Had he, with this statute before him, failed to call 
the militia into service, he would not onlj^ have been unfaithful 
to his trust, but the sin of perjury would have rested upon him. 
i^or could the pregnant facts have been overlooked or disregarded 
that on the 6th of March — seven weeks anterior to the date of 
the Proclamation — the Congress of the Confederate States had 
made provision, by law, for raising an army of 100,000 men, and 
that the Secretary of War of the Confederate States had boasted 
on the 12th of May — the day Fort Sumter was bombarded — " that 
the flag of the Confederate States of America would float over 
the dome of the Capitol at Washington before the first of Ma}', 
and eventually over Fanneuil Hall itself." 

The proclamation, then, of April the 15th was no war upon 
Virginia. 

No: Virginia herself commenced a war upon the United States. 
When the President called out the militia, he had the undoubted 
constitutional power to order their march at all times through the 
territory of Virginia, and of every other State. The Federal Gov- 
ernment has exclusively the war-making power for the whole 
Union, and the power to declare war and raise armies includes 
the power, necessarily, to march the federal troops all over the 
land. Had the militia then been marched into or through Vir- 
ginia, it would have been no invasion of the "sacred soil." It 
would have been clear right, and not a warlike act. 

But which committed the first act of aggression, Virginia or 
the United States? The facts clearly put the responsibility on 
the former. As far back as the 30th of March, 1861 — before 
she seceded — Virginia had seized the United States guns at 
Bellona arsenal. This I know personally, for I was at the 
time, as you know, a member of the Legislature, and resisted 
the act as unlawful and shameful. On the 17th of April, '61, by 
order of Governor Letcher, the channel of Elizabeth river was 
obstructed by the sinking of vessels loaded with granite, so that 
United States ships could not pass up to the Navy Yard at 
Gosport, nor merchantmen to Norfolk, in pursuit of legitimate 
commerce. On the 18th of April, a force was sent by Gov. Letcher 



33 

to take possession of Harper's Ferry, when the Virginia forces 
fired on the United States soldiers, and killed two. April the 18th, 
the custom-house and post office at Richmond were seized, and 
about the same time the custom-house at Norfolk, and the navy 
yard at Gosport. Now, all these were acts of war, and they trans- 
pired before a United States soldier trod the soil of Virginia, or 
a gun was lired within hearing of her people. On the 17th of April, 
Gov. Letcher issued his proclamation calling on the people of 
Virginia to hold themselves in readiness to resist the federal 
troops ; and on the 24th of April the State became a member of 
the Southern Confederacy. By this act, she became a party to 
all the hostile acts of the Government of the Confederate States — 
the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the seizure of the forts and 
ships, and all other illegal and belligerent acts of the new Con- 
federation. All this was before any advance of a federal army 
into Virginia. No advance was made, indeed, until the 24th of 
May, when Alexandria was taken. 

With what reason, then, can it be said that Mr. Lincoln made 
war on Virginia? And yet thousands of her people were hurried 
into disunion by the misguided notion that they were acting on 
the defensive against an unconstitutional and aggressive war. 

Not less absurd was the pretext that the object of the war was to 
subjugate the South. There was not one fact to justify such a 
declaration. The proclamation of April the 15th, looked only to 
the execution of the laws, and the defence of the Capital from 
threatened sack ; and, since, there has been no act of the govern- 
ment bearing the faintest semblance of subjugation. 

And as groundless was the charge that general emancipation 
was an object of the war; for at the extra session of Congress in 
July last, the House of Representatives, by all the votes but two — 
and -those two of southern men — declared that the purpose of the 
war was not the abolition of slavery or the subjugation of the 
south, but the salvation of the government and the restoration of 
the Union. As for the executive branch of the government, it has 
done nothing thus far to encourage the idea either of emancipation 
or subjugation. What may occur hereafter, I, of course, cannot 
undertake to say; but if the action of Mr. Lincoln in overruling 
the proclamation of Gen. Fremont, and the sentiments of Secre- 



34 

tary Caleb B. Smith, in his patriotic speech delivered in Rhode 
Island during the past summer, be any index to the future con- 
duct of the administration, the struggle we are engaged in will 
preserve the character, thus far exhibited, of an honest effort for 
the preservation of the government, and the bringing back of the 
ancient Union. 

With these views, honestly entertained, you will perceive how 
difficult it must be with me to tread, even with my State, the 
thorny path of secession. I could not, and thank God I did not 
yield to the misrepresentation, prejudice and passion, which ren- 
dered her vote on her secession ordinance a nullity, and I am quite 
willing to bear all the consequences, be they what they may. 

There are still other reasons why I could not favor secession. 
I thought I saw, in disunion, the sure doom of the great southern 
institution of slavery. I am now convinced that my evil auguries 
are at least approaching fulfilment, and by the acts of the slave- 
holders themselves. None else could have shaken the founda- 
tions of the institution. Before this thing of secession began, it 
was reposing quietly and safely and acquiring strength, its an- 
tagonisms gradually compromising on account of the constantly 
increasing demand for cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco, which are 
most naturally and successfully the products of slave labor. But 
necessity is a shrewd teacher ; and it is now discovered that 
many regions of the earth hitherto regarded as unsuited to the 
cotton culture, are well adapted to it. To say nothing of India 
and Australia, Central America and the Island of Ilayti, with 
climate reasonably suited to white labor, can furnish cotton for 
the present consumption of the world. A few years' continuance 
of the war, by the high prices resulting from the sudden loss of 
the American crop, will stimulate the production of the staple in 
numerous parts of the world where it is not now raised, and then 
the southern monopoly will be gone, and with it will go southern 
slavery for ever. Without cotton, what is slavery worth ? 

Never have I known such an infatuation as that of the slave 
holders destroying the Union to save slavery. It was never so 
safe as under the segis of the Constitution of the United States. 
In this Union, it has "flourished like the green bay tree," and 
it has flourished nowhere else. I think the view I earnestly pres- 



35 

sed upon our legislature just before the State seceded, and often 
before, are those which should have governed the slave holders 
of the south. I said : 

" In my judgment, there is no safety for this institution save in the Constitution of 
the United States. There it is recognised and protected. No other property is speci- 
ally protected. Slaves are represented; no other property is. This Union of ours is 
the great bulwarli of slavery. No where else has it flourished ; and break up the 
Union when you will, you knock away its strongest prop. A Southern Confederacy 
will be to it its deadliest blast, if not its grave. The whole civilized world is intensely 
hostile to slavery; and the moment a new confederacy is formed, based on the single 
idea of slavery, numerous and malignant antagonisms will be evoked which may en- 
danger the institution. But under the shield of the Constitution of the United States, 
these antagonisms, whether foreign or domestic, are, and ever will be, harmless. In 
that blessed instrument it is a recognised institution — part and parcel of our frame of 
government, and of our social and industrial systems — to the protection of which the 
entire power of the great Government of the United States stands pledged before the 
entire world. Thus secure under the wing of the Union, whj^ shall we risk its securi- 
ty by rushing on untried experiments ?" 

Yes, why should we? Why expose it to the exacting and per- 
ilous necessities of war? Why let it go within reach of a whirl- 
pool, whose strong vortex may sweep down its bark, and submerge 
it forever ? 

Another exception I am constrained to take to pursuing the 
course my State prescribes me, is, she has transferred me to, and 
made me a citizen of, the Confederate States, without giving me 
a chance of indicating my assent or dissent. Bound hand and 
foot, I am sold to South Carolina, for she did the " dragging." I 
dispute the fairness of the sale ; I impeach the indentures for 
fraud ; and if I am to be sold, I want the poor privilege of choosing 
ray master. I shudder at the thought of being sold to South 
Carolina. For near forty years she has been a disturber of the 
national peace; for near forty years she has never caught one in- 
spiration from the stars and stripes. She is a wicked, seditious 
State. She hates the Union; I love it with all my soul. Let me 
never — oh ! let me never be turned over to such a State! Let me 
be a Russian serf, rather ! And then, to think of Virginia — once 
proud Virginia — the "mother of States and statesmen" — the 
land of stirring memories and "bright particular" renown — 
crouched at the footstool of South Carolina ! ! ! 

One more reason why I could not venture the fatal leap of se- 
cession. I had not the courage — I frankly own I wanted the 
courage. When Walpole, a prime minister of Great Britain, was 
taunted with an unwillingness to tax America, he replied: " I will 



36 

leave that measure to some one of ray successors who has more 
courage than I have." And so say I. I leave this dangerous, 
awful thing of secession to those who have more courage than I 
have. And I trust that those who have shown more courage in 
this matter than I could summon, will not have occasion to be 
reminded of the ill-fated history of the Grenville ministry, that, 
having more courage than Pitt and Walpole, did undertake to 
tax America, and, by so doing, lost to England the brightest 
jewel in her Crown. 

When I thought on the unhappy consequences that, I plainly 
foresaw, would come upon my State and her people ; when I saw, 
as plainly as I ever saw God's sun in the heavens, that if Vir- 
ginia seceded, her territory would become the theatre of a de- 
vastating war, and she and her citizens the chief sufferers by it, 
while the guiltier parties who had brought on the war would re- 
pose in the shade of comparative peace and ease; when I reflected 
that an absolute ruin of all her vital interests was inevitable : that 
her grand system of internal improvements — her future hope — 
would lie a heap of prostrate ruins; that repudiation even would 
be her doom by the exhausting effects of an exhausting war ; that 
her people would, by blockade, be cut off from the markets of 
the world, their comforts abridged, the price of all the necessaries 
of life advanced to insufferable rates, and the burdens of taxation 
crushing down the energies of her tax-payers ; that all the poor 
people of her tide-water region, whose subsistence was derived 
almost exclusively from the Northern trade, would be reduced to 
starvation ; that she would lose, in the first month of secession, 
three hundred millions of dollars in her slave property alone; 
when I contemplated the penury, and w^ant, and suffering of the 
humble poor which war brings with infallible certainty for that 
more helpless class ; the social desolation, the broken hearts, the 
helpless widowhood and orphanage, the severance of all the dear 
sweet ties of life, the burning hates, the alienation of bosom from 
bosom, the "death-feud's enmities" which can die only at the 
point of the piercing sword, the separation of husbands and wives, 
and fathers and mothers, and sons and daughters, the blood and 
death of war's sad havoc : I say, when I thought of all these in- 
evitable consequences of secession, my courage sank, and I re^ 



37 

solved — I know now I was right — to have my skirts clear and my 
hands clean when the day of retribution should come. 

How different would be her condition from what it is now, had 
she stood firmly by the Union ! Alas, I sicken at the contrast ! 
Had she stood firm, there can be no doubt that this internecine 
contest had long since ceased. , 

As for the other condition on which I maybe safe in Virginia — 
the taking of the oath of allegiance to the Confederate States of 
America — I spurn it with infinite scorn. I would sooner rot in a 
dungeon than swear any such fealty. 

This Government of the Confederr.te States of America I re- 
gard as the grandest, most stupendous fraud known in the history 
of the world. It is no government of the people. The people 
had no part nor lot in the matter. It was, as to the cotton States 
at least, the precipitation of discontented or ambitious spirits that 
sought no redress for actual grievances, but who, for a higher civil- 
ization, or a pure slave republic, or some other Utopian project, 
longed to break down the government. " All changes in the funda- 
mental law of a State, (said Mr. Calhoun) ought to be the work of 
time, ample discussion, and reflection." But how was it with the 
forniatiou of this Southern Confederacy? The South Carolina con- 
vention met on the 17th of pecember, '60, and on the 20th, she was 
out of the Union. And in less than four months eight stars had been 
struck from the national standard. A government which it had 
cost our fathers seven years hard fighting and as many of hard 
experience and sober reflection to create, in four short months 
dashed into ruins ! And this without the people being allowed the 
poor privilege of saying whether they would or would not sanction 
the vandalism ! I can swear by no such government. Nor do I de- 
sire to live, or to have my children live, under a government 
which contains, in the very first paragraph of its constitution, the 
principle of dissolution. Give me, rather, a government under 
which I and mine will have some guarantee for safety to property 
and for stability in all the rights of society, some safeguard 
against fickle change and destroying revolution. Give me the 
old Union — the Union of Washington and Madison, and Frank- 
lin, and not this poor abortion of Davis,Yancey, andRhett, which, 

" Like the Borealis race 

That flits ere you can find the place," 



38 

In truth, this struggle on the part of the loyal States, is a strug- 
gle for the very existence of the institution of property and of all 
government itself. As such, it ought to be, and must be met. 

For one, I cannot listen to the dulcet strain which comes up 
from the south on a thousand strings, that this struggle of the 
cotton states is a struggle for the great principles of civil liberty. 
To put it on so honorable a basis, is bold imposture. The Con- 
stitution of the United States is the best system of civil liberty 
that ever emanated from human hearts and heads. It is the ac- 
cumulated political wisdom of the world from the time of Magna 
Cliarta to 1789. Those who would subvert it, are no friends to 
civil liberty. They are strangers to the spirit of Hampden, and 
Russell, and Pyra, and Algernon Sidney. 

I think my old friends in Virginia ought to pardon me for my 
great love of the Union, for I have had some good teachers among 
her distinguished sons, whose precepts I have never forgotten, 
and never shall forget. I quote, as the last section of this long de- 
fence, the following patriotic, immortal sentiments : 

" When your fathers attempted to form this Union, they did not know, beforehand, 
what sort of a Union it was to be. 

" They set to work, and did the best they could under the circumstances. 

" What they would accomplish no man could tell. There was not a head upon 
either of them that had the human wisdom to foretell what it was to be ; but they 
went in for Union for Union's sake. - 

" By all the Gods, by all the altars of my country, I go for Union for Union's sake. 
They set to work to make the best Union they could, and they did make the best 
Union and the best Government that ever was made. 

" Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, — all combined, in Congress or out of Congress, 
in Convention or out of Convention, never made that Constitution — God Almighty 
sent, it down to your fathers. It was a work, too, of glory, and a Avork of inspira- 
tion. 

" I believe that as fully as I believe in my Bible. No man from Hamilton, and 
Jay, and Madison — from Edmund Randolph, who had the chief hand in making it— 
and he was a Virginian — the writers of it, the authors of it, and you have lived under 
it from 1789 to this year of our Lord 1858, none of your fathers, and none of your 
fathers sons have ever measured the height, or the depth, or the length, or the breadth 
of the wisdom of that Constitution." 

These are the words — of whom ? Of Gov. Henry A. Wise. 
They should be read every day in ever}^ American school, and 
be gotten by heart by every American youth. Long, long, may 
they animate the American heart ! 

And now, I shall take the liberty, in return for the uncharita- 
ble judgment and abundant denunciation which have been mj' lot 
in ray native land, to venture to my fellow-citizens there a little 
advice, which however uuthankfully received, is honestly tendered. 



39 

Give up this ill-omened and ruinous war. Require your law- 
givers at once to adopt the amendment proposed by Congress to 
the Constitution to prohibit all interference with slavery in the 
States, and then return to your loyalty and to the Union of old. 

And I assign two brief reasons, for the admonition. First, if 
this war is not speedily terminated, the institution of slavery is 
gone forever — not by the willing acts of the government, but by 
the current of irresistible events — a consequence, not an object of 
the war, for which secession alone will be responsible. The high- 
est interest of the slaveholders, if they desire to preserve their 
peculiar institution, is, THE SPEEDIEST POSSIBLE TERMI- 
NATION OF THE WAR. Secondly, persistence in this strug- 
gle is vain. There is one reason establishing its vanity, indei3end. 
ent of all others, and that is, that the people of the Mississippi val- 
ley must have the free navigation of the "great father of waters," 
and will have it at every hazard, and will fight for it while a drop 
of western blood remains. They ivill have it, I repeat. It is a 
geographical necessity totally irresistible. The States of the 
lower Mississippi and those above must belong to the same Gov- 
ernment. There can be no divided empire there. Unless the 
people of Virginia, then, are prepared to carry on this unnatu- 
ral and wasting contest until the last western man — a race as brave 
as their southern brethren, and capable of far more physical en- 
durance — has fallen in his tracks, they had better at once throw, 
down the arms of rebellion, and return to the Government under 
which they were always prosperous and happy, and under which 
their State was so rapidly advancing to power and grandeur. 

This long letter I have written as a defence of my course. I 
wish to let my fellow-citizens of Virginia see that while I have^ 
not been able to go with ray State at this trying crisis, I have, at* 
least, respectable reasons "for the faith that is in me." I trust 
you will make an effort to get it into some of the papers of the 
State, that this my defence may be known. It will be at least a 
consolation to my family, and to the few cherished friends whom 
neither the troubles of the times ivjr defamation have estranged. 

Afi'ectionately, 

JOS. SEGAR. 



LIBRS.?Y OF CONGRESS 



002 527 738 7 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 





DDDE52773a7 



# 



